The recent controversy surrounding Lady Gaga and Outer Biosciences centres on her fiancé, Michael Polansky, and the company they co-founded. Outer Biosciences was established in 2020 and is developing an AI-driven platform that keeps donated human skin tissue viable outside the body for weeks, allowing researchers to test compounds for potential skincare and pharmaceutical applications. Gaga sits on the company’s board, while Polansky is its CEO. Recent reporting says the company has raised roughly $23 million.
The Israel connection being circulated online requires some qualification. Outer Biosciences has been reported as having received investment from Lightspeed Venture Partners, alongside other investors. Lightspeed is a US venture-capital firm with significant activity and investment relationships involving Israel. However, I cannot find reliable evidence that Outer Biosciences itself is an Israeli company, Israeli-owned, funded by the Israeli government, or that Gaga personally received Israeli government money. The stronger social-media claims currently go beyond what the available evidence establishes.
Gaga does, however, have a documented history of performing in Israel. In September 2014, during the Gaza war, she proceeded with a scheduled concert in Tel Aviv despite calls for artists to cancel. Following the concert, she described Tel Aviv positively and said that the way the world viewed Israel did not reflect her experience there. This history has subsequently led Palestinian activists and boycott advocates to accuse her of helping normalise Israel internationally.
The other side of the story is particularly striking given Gaga’s enormous history of political and humanitarian activism. She has publicly championed LGBTQ+ rights, HIV/AIDS causes, mental-health awareness and other humanitarian issues, making her relative silence on Palestine conspicuous to many fans.
As of August 2026, I can find no substantial public record of Lady Gaga making a clear, sustained pro-Palestinian statement, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, endorsing Palestinian liberation, or supporting BDS. A 2024 open letter specifically called on her to speak about Palestinian human rights, demonstrating that activists were already publicly asking her to use her platform.
So the most defensible conclusion is: Gaga has a documented history of performing in and speaking positively about Israel, while there is little publicly documented evidence of her speaking out for Palestine. The newly alleged Outer Biosciences/Israel financial connection is real only insofar as an investor in the company has Israel-linked operations; claims that Gaga or Outer Biosciences are directly Israeli-funded remain unsubstantiated by the evidence I could verify.